DASA scheme goes online

It facilitates admission of foreign nationals, NRIs to premier technology institutions

Speaking to reporters here on Thursday, NITK Director Sandeep Sancheti said that the application can be filled and submitted online, besides choice filling, fee payment, counselling and seat allotment.

“This will make the admission process more simple, transparent, less error prone and less time consuming”, he added.

The DASA scheme facilitates the admission of foreign nationals, PIOs/NRIs to technological institutions in India including 24 NITs, three IIITs, three Centrally-funded institutions and one Deemed University.

In all, 31 premier institutions across the country are offering more than 2,200 seats spread across various disciplines of engineering.

Sancheti said that at present only BTech courses are available, but courses like MTech, MBA, MCA, MSc and PhD will be introduced in the DASA scheme from the next year onwards. He added that around 800 admissions are expected this year and hoped that the numbers will go up to 2,000 next year. A number of changes have been introduced in the admission process this year, the most important being the merit based seat allotment based on the candidates’ SAT-II (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores in Maths, Physics and Chemistry.

Application fee reduced

The fee for application has been reduced to US$ 250, while the tuition fee remain the same as US$ 4,000.  Sancheti hoped that the application fee can be brought down to US$100 in the coming years. The process started on April 1 and the students can submit their application with supporting documents on or before June 30. The online application facility and the eligibility schedule has been posted in the DASA website www.dasanit.org and the NITK website www.nitk.ac.in